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1862. 



THE ILLmOIS FAEMEK. 



235 



in less time than those of less vigor and activity 

 They make blood and milk fast, and have there 

 fore more time to rest and thrive. If such ani- 

 mals were milked three times a day, their bags 

 would cease to become juU, or to get larger, tbey 

 would be better dairy animals, instead of "run- 

 ning to flesh" so much. As to all cows that 

 would fill their udders three times a dry, as this 

 depends upon the capacity to digest food, and 

 activity and rapidity in procuring and cocsumiug 

 it, each case can be best, and most of them only 

 decided by special trial for the purpose. But 

 some general rules for all cows, in summer and 

 in winter, appear to be that their bags should 

 never be allowed to remain long full, and seldom 

 to become so full as not to afford space for the 

 milk-veins to empty into the udd«r by an easy 

 flow. 



Say a cow's bag should not be allowed to re- 

 main more than seven-eighths full ; that the ca- 

 pacity and treatment of each cow varies, and to 

 get the full benefit of the former, the latter must 

 be adaptep to it. The udder should be draiued 

 of its contents as many times a day as the secre- 

 tive function will refill it. In many cases in 

 winter this will be once only in twenty-four 

 hours. In most instances two milkings will be 

 ample from the middle July forward, or even be- 

 fore, la a few instances, and while milk is in a 

 profitable demand for whatever purp.se, three 

 times a day will be found none too often to ac- 

 commodate the full capacity of the best cows, 

 and supply, at the same time, the largest returns 

 qy the gaeatest consumption of raw material, for 

 the public use and convenience. 



It is a fallacy to suppose something can come 

 from nothing ; hence the consumption of food 

 will be larger if the yield of milk is great. If 

 some cows supply more food than others with an 

 equal quantity of grass food, it is because they 

 have stronger digestive powers, which always 

 presupposes and involves — contrary to amateur 

 teaching a practice — the greatest activity of the 

 natural functions, and the fullest use of the na 

 tural elements, light and air, by means of unre- 

 stricted locomotive exertion. Tamwokth. 



Rhubarb Wine.— We tike the following re- 

 cipe from the Farmer's Journal, of Lower Can- 

 ada. Trim off the leaves and grind and press 

 the stalks in any cider mill. To each gallon 

 of juice add one gallon of water and six pounds 

 of refined sugar, and fill the casks, leaving the 

 bungs out. A moderately cool cellar is the best 

 place to keep it. Fill up occasionally either from 

 juice kept on purpose, or with sweetened water, 

 80 that the impurities which rise to the surface 

 while fermentation is going on, may be worked 

 off. When sufiBciently fermented, which will re- 

 quire from one to two more months, bung tightly 

 and let it remain till winter, when it may be 

 racked off into other casks or bottled. Some 

 persons refine it before bottling, by putting into 

 each barrel two ounces of isinglass dissolved in a 

 quart of wine. 



ANOTHES METHOD. 



Cut the rhubarb into small pieces, piit it into 

 just enough wa»er to keep it from burning, boil 



until quite tender, strain through a coarse cloth. 

 To one gallon of this liquid, add two gallons of 

 water ; to each gallon thus made, put four pounds 

 of sugar , ferment in an open vessel forty-eight 

 hours, then take off the scum, and add one pint 

 of best brandy to every four gallons, after which 

 put it into an air tight cask ; then let it remain 

 six months undisturbed when it will be ready for 

 bottling. In each bottle put one raisin, and seal 

 the bottle well. 



From the Journal of the 111. State Ag. Society. 



Illinois GoaL 



Rook Island, June 2, 1862. 

 Me. Editor : It is said by geologists that it is 

 no use digging for coal any lower down than what 

 are called the coal measures, because no worka- 

 ble bed of coal has never been found below those 

 strata. 



A discovery has just been made in this city of 

 Rock Island, which almost, but not quite, flies 

 in the face of the abcve geological maxim. Bor- 

 ing for water at our depot, in the Devonian lime- 

 stone, they have come to a bed of pure B/tumi- 

 nous coal, twenty six inches thick, 122 feet be- 

 neath the surface. If it had only been a foot or 

 so thicker, it might have been worked with profit 

 and every Rock Islander might have sunk a shaft 

 under his own kitchen floor and dug his own 

 coal, a hod full at a time, just as he wante d H. 



Four years ago I was talking to some men who 

 were boring an Artesian well in the Devonian 

 limestone at Davenport, and they told me that 

 eighty feet below the surface they ha d passed 

 through one inch of p'lre coal, and, further, that 

 in digging another well at the Davenport depot 

 they had formerly met with two| inches of pure 

 coal seventy or eighty feet from the surface. 

 The Davenport depot lies about three-quarters of 

 a mile from ours, and the other point where tbey 

 dug in Davenport about a mile uorth-w st, and, 

 according to the railroad levelings kindly furn- 

 ished me by the chief engineer, Mr. Brayton, 

 the first point is eighteen feet and the second 

 about twenty-eight feet higher than the level of 

 our Rock Island depot. Cnnsequently this would 

 place the two Davenport coals from sixty to sev- 

 enty feet higher than ours. Oar strata dip con- 

 siderably to the south, how much, exactly, I do 

 notknow, buti should think the difference in 

 the level of the Davenport and Rock Island coals 

 would be about the same as the dip, and, if so, 

 they probably form one continuous seam, thin- 

 ning out as it travels northwards. 



Prof. Worthen suggests that the men may have 

 passed through some such caverns in the lime- 

 stone, subsequently filled with coal during the 

 carboniferous period, as have been discovered in 

 river bluffs by the Iowa geologists. It may pos- 

 sibly be so, but the chances are greatly against 

 coal being deposited in three different spots in 

 three different caverns so as to lie so nearly, in 

 all three, in the plane of the dip. 



Sir Charles Lyell (Elements, p. 441,) says that 

 that the Ilandeilo rooks in Dumfries, Scotland, 

 contain beds of anthracite, but how thick those 

 beds are he does not state. Now, the Ilandeilo 



